[Marxism] RE:It's those damn petty-bourgeois at it again!

[dwalters@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

My first two cents on this.

In the US, my encounter with, membership in, and observation of various
Trotskyist groups seems to boil down to this: groups with the "worker state"
position don't care about it's members that have "state cap" positions, for the
most part. Those that have "state cap" positions elevate this question to a
level that requires agreement with them before they can even join, at least it
used to be like this. Not sure what that means, but I always thought that
interesting.

I agree with Junaid Alam: no one really cares. It doesn't, generally, guide one
to action in opposing US imperialism and what it does overseas. The ISO is a
case in point on this, obviously. In fact, the ISO,  that has what I consider
to be a silly state-cap analysis of Cuba, has a "better position", than, say,
the SWP, which has a "workers state" position but doesn't do anything to
mobilize the people to oppose the war. So for me, the ISO is simply better
politically "on Cuba" than the former Fidel Castro epigones of the SWP.

Of course, the reason the state cap tendency groups get pegged and lambasted by
others on the left has a lot to do with the way those who have state cap
positions that grew out of the old Shactmanite buearacratic-collecivist groups
like the Workers Party and ISL. The position gently evovled into
State-Department liberalism of the most rank order...Hal Draper, Cy Landy, et
al's anti-imperialist positions notwithstanding. Some of those with state-cap
and BC positions often argued during the early days of the US Vietnam war for
"US *and* USSR Out of Vietnam." But nothing akin to this has arisen lately, at
least not along those old lines.

Where it does, presently, in a way, become problamatical is in the situations
alluded to by Andy Pollack. Clearly, many
Trotskyists/ex-Trotskyists/I-don't-have-a-clue-what-Trotskyism-is-anymore
people on this particular list make a distinction between Cuba and it's
Revolution and a ex-Warsaw Pact countries like Poland or the USSR. While all of
the above, ISO included, may of supported the movement in Poland to get rid of
that's country's regime (the former seeing it as a 'political revolution', the
latter, a 'socialist revolution')this is certainly NOT the case with Cuba and
so Andy's question is certainly a good one, when and if a situation develops
that *looks* like it did in Poland (an event I highly doubt will come to pass).

David

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